


The Other Side

by moonboots



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonboots/pseuds/moonboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashura has feelings for someone he shouldn't, and Zero knows too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> Uses Japanese names and takes place after [Motivation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4958962). Thanks to Amielleon for the beta!

Ashura sank into the water with a happy sigh. This was _perfect_. This close to the water, he could feel the threads of steam wafting against his face. With the baths empty after peak hours, he was free to relax until his scarred hands looked like prunes.

The bath was hardly a substitute for open water, but he had longed to swim so many times while living in Nohr. After catching two colds from trying to bathe in frigid mountain streams, Ashura had given up on trying to wash regularly while on the road.

He leaned back to float on the surface, taking long, slow breaths. Water in general was something that he missed, not just baths. It was a precious resource in Nohr. Even the wilderness lacked the streams and ponds that had been plentiful on the other side of the Infinite Chasm. Swamps in the lowlands and thin, weak brooks in higher areas were the only sources of water outside cities.  
  
"Good evening, Ashura!"  
  
He flinched in surprise and dropped beneath the water’s surface with a splash. Head whirling from his pounding heart, he sat up and spat out a mouthful.  
  
"L-Lord Kamui! I didn't expect to see you in here so late." In fact, Kamui was one of the people he was trying not to see by bathing after hours.  
  
"Sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you. I was sparring with Zero and we worked up a sweat." Clad in bath towels, Kamui and Zero had obviously been damp even before the steam of the bath house. The prince wiped a smear of dirt from his face with a wet cloth as he entered. Behind him, Zero looked every inch satisfied with himself in spite of his tousled hair.  
  
"Oh. Good evening, Zero." The outlaw waggled his fingers cheerfully.  
  
"Awfully late, isn't it?" His playful air already had Ashura's teeth on edge; he was far from in the mood to deal with Zero's teasing and... _Kamui_ at the same time.  
  
"Having the bath to yourself can be nice," Kamui cut in before Ashura could think of something to say. "I like bathing with others whenever I have the chance, though. Only Camilla ever bathed with me when I was a boy, and..."  
  
Ashura found himself slouching in the water, staring at the reflection of the ceiling tiles instead of watching the other men settle in.  
  
Kamui had reached out to him immediately after sparing his life. Kamui had to be a busy man, but he kept making time for Ashura. Making sure he was in good spirits, seeing if he had been eating well (usually not), checking up on him after battles...

It was when Kamui had been so unwilling to let him fall into despair about Kouga that had clinched it, Ashura thought. The prince had gently asked him about his homeland, night after night, giving Ashura a chance to revisit memories nobody else had cared about for years. The faith, the affection, the trust...maybe it had been inevitable that he found himself eagerly looking forward to spending time with Kamui.

"Have you been busy, Ashura? I've hardly seen you."  
  
"Huh?" He looked up, blinking. The two men had sat down across from him. "Oh, uh, yeah. Scouting missions," he said vaguely.  
  
"Don't work yourself too hard," frowned Kamui. "You just got back on duty. How's your stomach?"  
  
Ashura's hand found the pink new scar without thought. The wound would have taken his life if not for Lady Camilla.

He had paid little attention to his own feelings at first. It had been so long since he had been around someone as affectionate as Kamui, wasn't it natural that he looked for it as a flower looked for sunlight? Such a thing was so rare in Nohr, after all.  
  
It wasn't until he was leaving Kamui's tree house only two days ago with a hand clasped over his wrist to savor the fading warmth of his touch that he stopped short and thought, _oh no._  
  
"It's healing fine," he told Kamui, realizing he'd been quiet for too long. It was going to be impossible to avoid drawing his attention if he kept getting lost in his own head. "Lady Elise is very skillful for her age."  
  
"Good." Kamui nodded. "But take it easy, okay? Elise was upset her hide and seek buddy was out of commission."  
  
He managed a lopsided smile. Kamui's persistent little sister was too sweet. "I'd hate to disappoint her."

Kamui's grin was bright enough to burn away the steam. “As long as you're okay, we're both happy.”

Ashura's heart pounded in his chest. If Kamui wasn't so sweetly oblivious, he'd almost think the prince was doing it on purpose. “Right...a-anyway,” he tried, looking away. “I should be heading to bed.”

When he went to stand, tingling legs refused to hold him and he fell back to his knees. He chided himself for sitting wrong as the other two looked at him curiously.

“Are you alright?” said Kamui, shuffling closer. Too close, _definitely_ too close, and that was more motivation than ever to get out.

“Fine,” he said quickly, forcing numbed feet under him and standing in a rush.

For some reason, the room was getting dimmer. Steamier? He squeezed his eyes closed and open, trying to clear it.

“Ashura--?”

* * *

The tile ceiling was behind Zero's head, and Ashura couldn't figure out what it was doing there. “Wh…?”

"Back with the living?” The outlaw smirked. “You couldn’t take the heat and made quite the splash passing out.”

Before he could do more than consider how embarrassing it was that he didn’t have the stamina for a simple bath, Zero leaned down to his ear.

"Actually, I think it was some princeling in particular that set your body aflame.”

_He knew._

Ashura surged into a sitting position. "Tell him and I will kill you," he hissed, but there wasn't a chance of being intimidating with how badly it made his head spin. He tipped into Zero's chest, breathing hard.

"I didn't realize I made you so excited," chuckled Zero. He took Ashura by the shoulders and lowered him back to the bench. "But you're going to have to restrain yourself. I don't think your body can take it."

"I feel awful," Ashura muttered, squeezing his eyes shut against the wobbly changing room. As unhappy as he was with Zero, he had to take a moment to appreciate just how bad he felt. Thinking back, he supposed he had noticed the chalky taste in his mouth and airiness in his head earlier, but he had assumed it was a temporary effect of the steam. His stomach roiled dangerously.

"It's no wonder that a man unused to indulgence becomes easily overstimulated." A deliciously cool washcloth found its way to his forehead, and his face sagged in relief. “When was the last time you had something to drink?"

"Ah..." He faltered.

"Heat exhaustion and dehydration. It was more than you could handle. Especially with the...extra heat." His fingers idly combed the wet mop of Ashura's hair away from his face.

"I was just trying to take a bath," Ashura ground out. The unexpected touch made him shiver, and he batted the hand away. "Stop touching me!"

"You can't really think I'm going to ravage you in a bath house foyer with Lord Kamui five minutes away, can you?" Zero's voice was always a liquid, unaffected drawl, but Ashura thought he detected a note of real disapproval.

"I'm not used to being touched like that," he muttered. "Don't surprise me when I feel like I'm about to be sick."

Zero took it for the concession it was, but laying off was not in his nature. "Lord Kamui hasn't gotten you used to it yet? He never stops touching people."

"I know." There was misery in Ashura's voice.

Zero laughed. "Oh, you really do have it bad. He loves playing with your hair, doesn't he? It must be torture."

"I told him he should stay away from me, but he wouldn't listen. He keeps showing up and touching my face and _talking_ to me..." He spoke of talking as if it were an act of both wonder and suffering. "He says I shouldn't eat alone, and when he joins me he sits so _close--_ one time I offered him a piece of apple because he likes them, and he ate it out of my _hand-_ -"

The bounty of information kept spilling from Ashura's mouth, and Zero’s body trembled with suppressed laughter.

"And how did you even know? _I_ didn't even know until two days ago."

"You came into breakfast looking as though the world had fallen out from under you. Only love could take a man to such depths of suffering so fast."

"Oh gods, don't call it that," Ashura groaned. "But--how did you know it was Lord Kamui?"

"You really did cook your brain if you forgot that you don't talk to anyone else."

Ashura dragged a hand down his face, somehow not displacing the cloth over his eyes.

"It can't be coming as a surprise to you, can it? Liking men? Not at your age."

Ashura reached over his head to give Zero's leg a shove. " _That_ was rude," he grumbled. "And no, I've known I liked men as well as women for longer than you've been alive--which is another problem."

"Lord Kamui's a man grown enough to be leading an army. You're hardly robbing a cradle."

"It's still a gap," said Ashura. "He'd probably want to be with someone his own age."

"I don't think Lord Kamui would let something like that keep him from his desires."

"And I don't know if he's even open to--that. He's been living in a fortress for most of his life, right? Did anyone _tell_ him?" In Hoshido and Kouga, it hadn't been a topic for polite conversation; noble men didn’t publicly devote themselves to one another. Thankfully, Ashura himself had been young enough that being caught experimenting with another trainee ninja had been considered a youthful indiscretion more than anything else--his father had been most disappointed that as a ninja, he’d been _caught._

He knew nothing of the practices of Nohrian nobility. The bandits who had been ready to accept any willing warm body for a night (and he was certain that more than one man he'd been with over the years had been imagining his mouth belonged to someone with a soft body and long hair) were no metric to judge polite society by.

There was such pathetic distress in Ashura's voice that even Zero had to take pity. "I don't know anything about Lord Kamui's personal preference, but I do know that the royal family of Nohr has no special bias against it. You wouldn't be strung up for asking."

"How do you--no, I won't ask." Even with half of his face covered, hope was plain to see until his lips twisted. "There's still too much difference between us. It wouldn't be right."

Zero made a show of counting on his fingers. Ashura wasn't _that_ old, so unless he was exaggerating for dramatic effect... "Longer than I've been alive...did you have a childhood crush on another boy? That's _adorable_ ," he cooed in a syrupy sweet voice.

"Shut up."

"And did you act the same as you are now? Because I expect this behavior more from a child."

"This is the last time I ever tell you anything."

"But being an agony aunt is such fun!"

"I never actually asked for your advice."

"No, but you've been worrying about it so much you hid in here and let your mind run in circles until your body couldn't keep up with the heat. If you care about him, you owe him the chance to make a decision for himself."

Ashura had nothing to say to that. As much as he wanted to point to his age or gender or background to disqualify himself, he couldn't say that he had the right to keep Kamui in the dark.

"Dammit..." There was something insulting about Zero speaking reason. He had a sneaking suspicion Zero might be giving him the worst advice possible in order to see him crash and burn, but he discarded the thought almost as soon as it formed. Zero knew where the lines were, and after being on the receiving end of his teasing too many times, Ashura could tell when he was being sincere.

"And he's not an idiot--two days might be coincidence, but he's going to notice you avoiding him."

Ashura groaned-- _that_ was a conversation he didn't want to imagine. He had done a poor enough job of keeping up with basic small talk.

Suddenly, Zero stilled and looked up. "Hm."

Ashura pushed the washcloth out of his eyes, staring at him cautiously. "What is it?"

Zero grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him off the bench. He tumbled to the tile with a bewildered yelp.

"I told you not to try getting up," Zero scolded loudly, crouching next to him as Kamui walked in the door.

"Oh, no! Ashura, are you alright? Felicia gave me some ice water, but you must still be feeling terrible." Kamui put a glass of water fresh with condensation on the bench and knelt next to him, easing an arm around his shoulders to help him sit up.

Ashura was too disoriented to protest. The sudden movement had set his nearly subsided nausea off again, and he rested his head on his knees in an attempt to quell it. It was for the best he couldn't see Zero's undoubtedly smug face, because he would probably fall and crack his head open trying to give the insufferable man the throttling he deserved.

"You're a bastard," he mumbled to Zero. Kamui must have assumed it was incoherent muttering, because he smoothed Ashura's hair back and placed the washcloth on the back of his neck instead of responding. Ashura shivered.

"Staves probably can't help with this, right? He just needs rest?" Kamui's legs were visible in the corner of his eye. He had only shrugged into the thin black shirt and pants he wore beneath his armor in his haste. The arm around his shoulders was so warm without the armor; in spite of his overheated state, it was somehow comforting.

"Mmm, it's dehydration from spending too long in the heat; any healer would tell him to drink water and sleep it off."

"If we can get him dressed, we can help him back to the barracks..." Kamui said thoughtfully. Ashura's stomach dropped.

"I can dress myself," he interrupted. He started to jerk up, but Kamui's hand was still resting loosely on the back of his neck. "Just-just give me my clothes, I can get dressed."

Kamui eased back to let him raise his head--a foolish part of him immediately missed the touch. "But you fell when you tried to get up just now, didn't you?"

No, he wanted to snap, but he could hardly say "Zero pushed me" without revealing everything, and sounding like a five-year-old besides. He made a noncommittal grunt instead.

"Don't worry. I promise I'll keep everything above the belt." Kamui rolled his eyes at Zero's innocently raised hands. Ashura scowled.

No amount of begging off would make them leave him. Zero egged on Kamui’s worries and even took the glass of water out of his hand after a bracing sip, _helpfully_ warning him that drinking too fast would only make him more sick. And Kamui wouldn't hear a single word about tasks like this being unsuitable for a prince. Grinding his teeth, Ashura gave up.

Leaning on Kamui's shoulder while Zero helped him into his pants was easily his most humiliating experience since joining Kamui's cause. He had only narrowly kept it from being even worse; as Zero was taller, Kamui had made as if to let Ashura lean on him and go for Ashura’s pants himself.

He slumped hard against Kamui to keep him from handing him off. Kamui kneeling in front of him was a mental image that absolutely could not become reality. Zero smirking at him from the ground was almost as bad, but at least now he could glare back at him over Kamui's head.

Perhaps it was because he wasn't entirely dry, but getting dressed only made him feel more cold. The water dripping from his wet hair was icy. He clutched his cloak around his shoulders as soon as Kamui handed it to him, and found himself longing to sit down again. Much to his frustration, Zero hadn't been completely making things up about his wellbeing--even with assistance, getting dressed left him tired and shivering. Standing on one foot to get his trousers on had been accomplished only with Kamui's help.

"Lord Kamui, do you think you can help him back to the barracks without me? Lord Leon had a task for me tonight, and I hadn't expected a bath to take so long."

"What?" said Ashura--now that he was actually feeling like he needed to lean on something, Zero was making himself scarce?--but Kamui was already nodding.

"Of course, I can take it from here. Thank you for all of your help, Zero. Tell Leon it's my fault if you're late."

"No trouble at all," said Zero. "I hope the rest makes you feel better, Ashura." Even without a single innuendo, his knowing smile was enough to make it seem filthy. Without a hand gesture to adequately communicate "I know exactly what you're doing and you're an asshole for it", Ashura settled for another scowl.

As Zero departed, he tried one last time. "Lord Kamui, I'm sure I can make it back on my own. You must have more important things to do--"

"Nonsense. If Zero hadn't dragged me into that spar, I'd be doing nothing but waiting for bed."

"Then surely you're tired?"

Kamui laughed. "It takes more than a round of kicking Zero up and down the arena to make me tired. Come now, if anyone's tired it must be you."

He had finished dressing himself while Ashura was struggling with his shirt, and the arm that slid around his waist (outside of his cloak, thankfully) was cool and armored. Still, the proximity calmed the shivering he hadn't been entirely able to suppress.

The only silver lining was that Kamui likely assumed his flush came from overheating.

The secret realm they used as a base was permanently balmy, but when Kamui opened the door of the steamy bath house it felt like the heat was being sucked out of him. He shuddered as they stepped outside, slouching and pulling his cloak around him more tightly. Kamui glanced at him, but he shook his head. Stay focused, keep walking, and stop leaning into him, he told himself.

Kamui had yet to convince him to take a private room. It felt like far too much luxury for Ashura, especially considering how he had come to join them. The men in the barracks were friendly enough, and it wasn't as if Ashura had any belongings to store in a room of his own, anyway. Kamui was happy to call him to his own room when he wanted to talk privately.

It was early enough that the other men he shared the room with were still out and about, thankfully. He hoped again that Kamui would leave him at the door, but he ushered Ashura all the way up to his bed.

Kamui's arm lingered on his waist as they stood in front of the bed, but before Ashura could break the awkward silence, Kamui stepped back.

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you in front of Zero."

"Eh?"

"You're probably feeling fine by now, but it scared me when you fainted. I guess I went a little over the top making sure you were alright." Ashura couldn't figure out why Kamui was avoiding his eyes; the prince was normally so frank.

"It's alright," he said, bemused. His earlier consternation melted away. "Keeping my dignity in front of Zero isn't possible, anyway." He dropped down on the bed more heavily than he meant to.

Sitting down made his head spin again, so he rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang. He stared at his boots, breathing slowly until it passed. That bastard Zero had even tightened the laces for him; getting them off was going to be a pain. Just as he decided he was going to have to lie down and dirty the sheets to remove them without bending over, Kamui knelt in front of him and started tugging them off.

"I'm not going to undress you, but you looked like you were staring at a puzzle," he said with a smirk. Hearing the phrase "undress you" coming out of Kamui's mouth (regardless of the negative in front of it) was more than enough to interrupt Ashura's higher brain functions. By the time he was collected enough to be sure something other than a repetition would come out of his mouth, Kamui was already sitting back on his heels.

"Thanks," he mumbled belatedly. And then, as his mind caught up, "Hey, if you want to sit, sit up here. Your butler would never forgive me for letting you sit on a floor he hadn't personally deep-cleaned."

Kamui laughed as he stood, brushing off his knees. "Unfortunately, you might be right. Joker's always been very protective of me."

"You don't say? He's awfully subtle about it." Now that he was sitting still, Ashura was feeling the cold again. His clothes were still on the damp side, and his shaggy, wet hair chilled his shoulders through his cloak. Undressing wasn't an option for more than one reason, so he took the blanket and pulled it over his lap, sitting cross-legged to keep his heat in one place.

Kamui raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything about it as he sat halfway down the bed. Instead, he continued.

"When I would scrape my knee as a child, Joker--or Camilla, when she visited--would be there in a second to fix me up, take me inside, and sit me down with a snack until I felt better." He smiled. "Joker would always find someone to blame--he looked very capable to me when I was a little boy, but thinking about it now, he was a ten-year-old scolding grown knights for leaving their practice blades in the grass."  
  
Ashura snorted. "I can picture that perfectly." Kamui's butler didn't seem to accept failure as an option, whether he was protecting his master from a Faceless four times his size or the mild inconvenience of leaving the castle without an extra handkerchief.

"I was very protected," Kamui continued. A shadow came over his eyes. "Well--knowing some things I know now, perhaps...no." He shook his head. "What matters is what I remember."

Ashura frowned. He only roughly knew the circumstances of the conflict he was now involved in. It was already obvious there were things going on behind the scenes that he didn't fully understand, but he had little desire to convince the royal family to go through with his execution by eavesdropping on them. When it wasn't immediately relevant to him, he was fine with following orders without question. He had sworn himself to Lord Kamui and Lady Aqua. It was more or less what he'd been doing for the last decade or so, after all, and Kamui was a far more scrupulous master than any slumlord he'd ended up doing work for in the past.

"Anyway," said Kamui, shaking off whatever chain of thought that had given his face such a quietly mournful cast, "everyone was always there for me. Marx and Leon can be distant, but I know that it's not because they don't care."

"It's good that you grew up with people who love you," Ashura said slowly. What was Kamui driving at?

"Well--" Kamui flushed, his pointed ears turning red. Ashura was only more confused. What was embarrassing about having a loving family? He amended that thought--from the little he had seen of how Lady Camilla personally interacted with Kamui, he could imagine a young man growing into independence like Kamui being embarrassed by her attentions.

"Everyone was always there for me, but I did little for them. I was a child. Since leaving the fortress, I've met so many people."

"A new world can be overwhelming. I...hadn't left Kouga many times before it fell. Ending up in Nohr for the first time by myself..." The years immediately after Fuuma's attack held no good memories. "It went about as well as you could expect."

Kamui's brow softened in empathy. "How old were you?"

"About the age you are now. I was a fully-fledged shinobi, but I hadn't done many missions on my own." Even the language of Nohr had been something he had only academic knowledge of, and he had found himself on the raw end of more than one bargain before he became fluent.

"It must have been hard," Kamui said quietly.

Ashura gave an awkward shrug; he still wasn't sure what to do with sympathy. "Things are better now," was all he said.

Kamui leaned back. "I've met more people in the last two months than I ever have in all my memory, and there's so..." --he waved a hand, trying to find the word-- " _much_ to them. So much pain and love and hope. Things I understand, and things I don't. It's why I want to end this peacefully--I don't want to take any more of those people out of this world than I absolutely have to."

Ashura's smile was fond. "You're a good person, Lord Kamui. I don't think someone who wasn't as kind as you would have spared me."

"It was the right thing to do," said Kamui, his eyes sliding away.

What was Kamui so anxious about? Was this really the same man who had shoved his hand in Ashura's hair and remarked on its exceptional fluffiness the first time they'd had a proper one-on-one conversion?

"I'm sorry, I keep getting off-topic," Kamui said hastily. Ashura shook his head.

"It's not like talking to you is a chore. It sounds as though some of this has been bothering you, too. After all you've done for me, the least I can do is listen." He settled back. Sleep was starting to pull at him now that he was warm, but he kept his focus on Kamui.

Who was staring at Ashura's discarded boots as if they were fascinating, again. If Ashura didn't trust him so much, he would be feeling self-conscious. There really must have been something on his mind if he was this standoffish.

"What I meant to say is that there are many people I've come to care for since leaving the fortress, and I've found that I like it. Taking care of people, I mean. It feels good." He chuckled, turning back to Ashura. "But I guess I've learned a little too much from Camilla, so I'm sorry if I embarrassed you."

"Well, I can say that I've never seen a noble as involved with his subordinates' lives as you." Kamui somehow found a spare minute for absolutely everyone, from his sister's friends to the cooks to--well, to the weary old thief whose life he had saved.

"I suppose I've always been like that. The servants I grew up with in the fortress are like family to me. There was a time Joker took ill when I was a child, and when I realized he wouldn't have Camilla or anyone taking care of him while he was sick, I took it upon myself. I got Felicia and Flora to sneak me out of my room, and..." He laughed. "Well, we tried. Joker nearly cried when he saw us, but he kept trying to get out of bed because Felicia was trying some folk remedy she half-remembered and making a mess. She almost froze him, and we were in such a panic Flora went to Gunther for help and claimed responsibility for it all."

Ashura couldn't help but laugh along, imagining young Kamui already drawing people in with his charm and trying to put a smile on a lonely face. "At least he seems to have survived. Maybe a little worse for the wear, if he had a sweeter temper before that."

"He spent an extra week in bed. Oh, did Gunther scold us."

"He sounds more like a nursemaid than a knight."

"Something like that," said Kamui. "He seemed stern when I was a boy, but he did a lot to keep all of us happy."

At least he knew that he could still have a normal conversation with Kamui in spite of his feelings; never speaking to him again was one of the worse things Ashura could imagine. His conversations had become a highlight of Ashura's day, and he was able to slowly relax and let more and more of himself ease out.

He knew he had to come clean with Kamui. Zero was right, he owed it to him. Maybe he could take some time and think of the right way to phrase it, though. There was no need to go choking on his own foot and ruining things when he had only just found such contentment. Yes, as long as he could keep acting normal around Kamui in the meantime, he didn't have to be hasty with composing his... well, confession. Such a fanciful word was the domain of younger men, but a better term seemed just out of reach…

* * *

  
Finally, Kamui turned away from the boots he had been fixated on. "Hey, Ashura, there's something I wanted to ask--oh."

Huddled up in his cloak and blankets, the older man's head was already resting on his chest, deep in sleep.

"I knew I should have gotten to the point faster," Kamui chided himself. As much as he didn't want to disturb the tired man it would be mean to leave him to wake up to a crick in his neck, and Ashura didn't stir as Kamui eased him into a supine position.

It was probably for the best, Kamui thought. If Ashura was this sleepy, he wasn't up for a long talk anyway. He had been excited at catching Ashura in the bath after not seeing him around for the last few days, and got ahead of himself without thinking of the older man's condition.

He indulged himself with finger-combing Ashura's wild hair out of his face before stepping back. Touching him took on a different tone now that he knew what he wanted. Well, the adventurer wasn't going anywhere; he could afford to take some rest. Talking about his feelings could wait until tomorrow.


End file.
